485: Josh Smith—Made FOR America

Founder and president of Montana Knife Company https://www.montanaknifecompany.com/ Josh Smith sits down with Mike to discuss his unlikely path from working as a lineman to becoming one of America's premier master bladesmiths. The conversation dives into the grit, craftsmanship, and obsession with quality that helped turn a small operation into one of the fastest-growing knife manufacturers in the country. The two also talk about the grand opening of MKC's brand-new 50,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Missoula, where Josh explains why controlling his supply chain matters now more than ever—and what "Made in America" actually requires behind the scenes. Along the way, Josh gives Mike an exclusive look at a brand-new blade that hasn't been released to the public yet. It's a conversation about work ethic, American manufacturing, entrepreneurship, and the sharp edge between tradition and innovation.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Well, it's the way I heard it, as you probably knew. I'm Mike, and my guest today is Josh. And with me in PH3 is Chuck. Should I be more formal with the names, you think?

• 0:14Speaker 01

  I don't think you can. Josh Smith, Chuck Klausmeyer, Mike Rowe.

• 0:18Mike Rowe?

  Oh, that's true. Josh Smith, if he sounds familiar to you loyal listeners, it's because he's been on a couple times, once in 2024, and then once we did a remote with him and our friend Bayard Winthrop.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 0:33Mike Rowe?

  Shortly after the tariffs were instituted.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 0:38Mike Rowe?

  Because I was really curious to hear from people who were making stuff in this country, you know, and the tariffs were headline news, and I guess they're still in the headlines. But it's a really, well, it's a sensitive topic for a lot of reasons, mostly because it's been politicized horribly, but there are consequences, and many of which are unintended, I think, that are worth acknowledging. But that's really not why I wanted Josh back on. Josh Smith, who created the Montana Knife Company six years ago, up in Frenchtown, outside of Missoula, in the great state of Montana, really had a milestone. He built an enormous manufacturing facility.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21Mike Rowe?

  And it's not just beautiful to look at, it's extraordinary in that 5,000 people traveled from all over the country to stand in line.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34Mike Rowe?

  For a chance to get a tour of the factory floor.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38Mike Rowe?

  And he's encased the whole thing in glass, so people can stand in like the lobby and, and look at the product being made, which I just think is terrific.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  I mean, honestly, I didn't think there were 5,000 people in the state of Montana.

• 1:52Mike Rowe?

  Well, I don't know that there are, but that's why I said they came from all over.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56Mike Rowe?

  You know?

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57Mike Rowe?

  So why Josh Smith? Because he's making a truly useful product for Americans and anybody who wants one. He's doing it in this country. He went from working out of his basement on his ranch to employing 121 people. He's built a $70 million company.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16Mike Rowe?

  And here he is, doing this incredible...

• 2:20Mike Rowe?

  unveiling this remarkable milestone and I just for the life of me, I felt terrible that I couldn't be there personally.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29Mike Rowe?

  Because he did invite me, but I was kind of just appalled that there was no national media there.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:36Mike Rowe?

  And he invited them, you know?

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38Mike Rowe?

  Like this is a chance to cover one of the great American manufacturing success stories in the last five or six years. And it sure does seem like with everything out there, all the commitments and all the desire to reinvigorate the trades and reshore and reindustrialize, this would be a cornerstone.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  You think it'd be a slam dunk for national media to pay attention to it.

• 3:02Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  You know, and listen, and one of the things that comes up in this episode that's really important is the fact that he's getting ripped off by imitators. People are, you know, buying what they think is an American-made Montana knife and in fact, it is not.

• 3:20Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  And so if you are looking to get a Montana Knife Company knife, there's only one place to get it and that's on his website.

• 3:28Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  MontanaKnifeCompany.com.

• 3:30Mike Rowe?

  And why would you do that? Why, do you really need another knife? I don't know. I'm not sure how your cutlery is currently arranged or what your practical needs might be, but I can tell you this, study after study is proven, people feel better after buying a knife from MKC.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:48Mike Rowe?

  It's just the act of doing it. They're not cheap, but Josh has done so many things right and his customers have rewarded him in a way that only a truly engaged customer can by showing up to celebrate the opening of this facility. So I invited it back on also to thank him, you know, he told me a couple of years ago, he wanted to do something nice for the MicroWorks Foundation. And so he made a custom blade for MicroWorks, which sold out in about six seconds.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:21Mike Rowe?

  I mean, hundreds of them and we raised, I don't know, sixty, sixty-five thousand dollars. And then he created something called the Rocker, which is the ultimate working man utility knife.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:33Mike Rowe?

  And pledged like 10% of sales to MicroWorks forever in perpetuity.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:40Mike Rowe?

  And that's generated close to $200,000 so far for our Work Ethic Scholarship Program. So yeah, I'm biased. I like Josh. I like his product. I like Montana. I like what he's doing up there. And, you know, the more I talk to him, the more certain I am that we're back in the right horse here. If you need a knife, suffice it to say, there's only one sensible place to get it. And if you want a really fun, honest, transparent conversation about what it takes to run a business, a manufacturing business in these United States here in the year of our Lord 2026, well, stay tuned, because this episode is called

• 5:20Mike Rowe?

  "Made for America," which will be explained at the very end. So stick with us. Josh Smith right after this.

• 5:36Mike Rowe?

  So as some of you may have heard, I went to Congress 16 years ago to testify before a House Subcommittee. And then again, a year later, to testify before a Senate Subcommittee about the need to reinvigorate the skilled trades with some kind of national effort that would make a more persuasive case for a lot of good jobs out there that didn't require a four-year degree. Well, 15 years later, I finally heard back from the government, and I am delighted to tell you about a program called buildfreedom.us. This is the national PR campaign that MicroWorks has been talking about for a decade and a half now, and it's

• 6:20Mike Rowe?

  focused on 300,000 or 400,000 excellent jobs in the defense industrial base. These are the electricians and the plumbers and the steam fitters and the pipe fitters and the CNC operators and the shipbuilders and so forth. But in this case, all of those trades are focused on building out our national infrastructure through the defense industrial base. So people who are building our autonomous weapons, our planes, our ships, it's only a matter of national security. And it's a very big deal and on a personal level, it's really been very gratifying. Build Freedom donated $10 million to MicroWorks. The money's available right now for you. If you want to pursue a skill that's in demand and work in the defense industrial base.

• 7:05Mike Rowe?

  I think it's an opportunity of a lifetime. Go to buildfreedom.us, see what's available and then apply for a scholarship from MicroWorks. The money's there, burning a hole in my pocket. Go get some, buildfreedom.us.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  You live up by San Francisco, is that right?

• 7:26Mike Rowe?

  North, north of the city, not far, just over the bridge.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  So you still, uh, my wife and I were talking about being surprised that you were still in the state and...

• 7:34Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Paying taxes here.

• 7:37Mike Rowe?

  I'm surprised myself, I sure am.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Are you? Especially as much as you're gone.

• 7:42Mike Rowe?

  You know what, it's funny, I was just driving over the Golden Gate yesterday, going in to narrate a pile of shit. And I'm like, goddamn, I can't believe the toll on this bridge. It's gone up like...

• 7:52Speaker 02

  How much is it?

• 7:52Mike Rowe?

  It's like nine or 11 dollars or something. But I'm thinking, what's the toll for the state, you know? Like the toll just to wake up and breathe here.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Oh, it's...

• 8:01Mike Rowe?

  It's steep.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  It's hefty. My next door neighbor just got his residency. He's got a dental practice right down here in LA or somewhere. And he's just spent more than half his last year of 25 in Montana because now he's paying income tax in Montana. And he's about to sell his business.

• 8:19Mike Rowe?

  If you're just joining us, folks, it's the joys of living in California with Josh Smith. By the way, dude, welcome to a very short list, aside from my mother and I guess one or two other...

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Selena Zito.

• 8:32Mike Rowe?

  Selena Zito, who writes a great column called, uh, In the Middle of Somewhere. We don't have a lot of people back twice.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Really?

• 8:41Mike Rowe?

  Really.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  That, well, I'm honored.

• 8:43Mike Rowe?

  Well, don't be honored because I'm going to exploit you and pick your brain shamelessly here. Thank you for making the time.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, and how is your mom?

• 8:52Mike Rowe?

  My mom's good, she's, um... She's working on her fifth book, almost finished. She's like, God, is she 88 or 89? I mean, she's old.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  I'll have to look it up.

• 9:02Mike Rowe?

  She's very old.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  She's amazing.

• 9:04Mike Rowe?

  She's incredible.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:05Mike Rowe?

  And my dad is like 93 or 94 and, you know, he's just living their best life with the bocce ball, you know, and they've got the book club and they got the pool tournaments and they've got the, you know, geez, all the games, the boggle and the, what's the one we always joke about Chuck? The game that put the funny name.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Right. You know, and she always says, is it, is it pronounced this or that?

• 9:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. What is that?

• 9:34Speaker 02

  Maybe that should just be the name of the game.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh. Do you remember that?

• 9:37Mike Rowe?

  But.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  What?

• 9:40Mike Rowe?

  Rummy Cube.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Roomy Cube or Rummy Crew?

• 9:43Mike Rowe?

  Or Rummy Cub.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Or Rummy Cub, yeah.

• 9:45Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, to answer your question, this is a perfect example of the kind of exchange you could expect to enjoy at the Oak Crest Retirement Community. You know, a sentence starts, a proper noun vanishes from the short-term recall, and maybe a half hour spent trying to identify what it was I thought I wanted to say.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Welcome to the show.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, perfect.

• 10:05Mike Rowe?

  Big congratulations, man. You, you guys, just in the way of a quick bit of backstory, in case I didn't do it in the preamble, Josh has been making knives now with MKC. What are you, in six or seven years?

• 10:19Speaker 01

  This would be year six, yeah. I mean, kinda, year five, really.

• 10:23Mike Rowe?

  Which is nothing, which is young. You're very, like, for a manufacturing company, you're still early, early innings, but what a milestone you've just hit in Montana. Thank you for the invite. I'm so sorry I couldn't make it. Josh opened an incredible facility where, I mean, the handiwork is truly on display here.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:45Mike Rowe?

  It was a glass building.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:46Mike Rowe?

  And, you know, I'm just, he walked in the studio 10 minutes ago and I'm watching this video on YouTube and they're like. Thousands of people turned out.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:56Mike Rowe?

  To see what you built. And I got so many questions for you, but how do you account for that, man? Why do people care about the business of making knives?

• 11:06Speaker 02

  I think it's the American dream manifesting right in front of people's eyes and they've gotten to watch the struggles and watch me start it right from scratch in my garage in COVID in 2020, you know? And it was just at that time, my daughters and my son and my wife and I. And you spin that forward today, it's 121 employees. And it's been really, I mean, I quit my day job December 30th of 2020. So we kind of consider that like our first day, like.

• 11:38Mike Rowe?

  Were you still a lineman then?

• 11:39Speaker 02

  Yep. I was a lineman for the power company. Yeah. And so that was really what we considered day one is January 1st of 21, when it was like, okay, we're going to go after this.

• 11:49Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  And a couple of buildings later, you know, built the second building out of my two car garage in my horse pasture because it was like, I'm not sure this is really gonna go for a long time, but we'll see. And we were in that about three months and realized we're going to grow out of this building. And that's when we started looking for ground and built what we just moved into, which is 51,000 square feet of manufacturing space. With the Black Rifle Coffee retail in a retail store inside of that.

• 12:21Mike Rowe?

  In Missoula?

• 12:23Speaker 02

  In Missoula, Montana, which is, I'm very, very proud of that because it's not a manufacturing base. It's not, it's a place people go to.

• 12:31Mike Rowe?

  It's not a hub.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  No, it's a place to go fly fish, you know, but it should show anybody and everybody out there that you can be anywhere in this country now and start a company and build an American brand, which is what we're building.

• 12:46Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Well, look, I mean, that's why I wanted to have you on again, A to say congratulations for this. I'm looking at the, uh,

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:54Mike Rowe?

  The video right now.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Why, why is it going fast forward like that? Is that intentional?

• 12:59Mike Rowe?

  No, that's you, dude.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  I don't think it is.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  That's weird. Well, something going on there.

• 13:04Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, it's a plaything.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm standing on a fire truck there. It's funny. We, uh, we had so many people there that I had to, we climbed up. The fire department brought out their fire trucks and, uh, we spoke to the people in front of that. We had between four and 5,000 people attend that day.

• 13:20Mike Rowe?

  That's so crazy, man. I still can't get over it. I mean,

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Mostly from out of state.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  People, they were out of rental cars in Missoula on Thursday afternoon for a Saturday event. It was crazy.

• 13:32Mike Rowe?

  I mean, this sounds paternalistic. I don't mean to ask it this way, but do you, I mean, do you fully understand what kind of engagement? That represents when a knife customer will drive from out of state to stand in line at three o'clock in the morning for the privilege of touring a manufacturing facility where the aforementioned knives are fashioned. That's weird, man.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  It's weird for sure. I mean, it's, people ask me all the time. They're like, why? And we ask ourselves. I mean, I, in a way, don't understand it. In another way, it's a positive story. It's one of the few things that you look out there and you see, and it's so positive. Everything about it is positive. It's that, you know, we didn't sell out to VC, like we bootstrapped it. And I constantly, over the last five years, have been on social media saying, like, I mean, my employees got to watch, and this was really good for them. They got to ask me, why are those people stretching a tape measure across your house? And I was like, because I'm putting, Brandon and I are putting our houses on the line to build this next building. Like, we're borrowing and we're

• 14:40Speaker 02

  doing everything we can. And we talked about the struggles all the way along of growing manufacturing and how do you start with nothing? And, and you don't, I didn't know how to do this. I was a lineman. You know, to scale, everything I did, I did wrong in the beginning as far as like the first 200 knives I made. I did it all wrong and I realized this isn't scalable and I started researching and just improving each day. Um, but I think the reason it resonates is because it's, we've done it in front of the public and it also, I'm just a regular person. I'm not some fancy business guy or celebrity or had big money behind us. And I think people want to come out. Most people just said they wanted to come up and just say, congratulations.

• 15:24Mike Rowe?

  That's it, you know, I think there's a micro macro element to everything you've done. You know, it's yeah, you're one guy. All shucks, Josh Smith, Montana, grew up where you did, background, what it is, and you've built this thing. You know, that kind of story relates to individuals. But all of this is playing out right now at a time in our country that is just incredibly consequential on a macro level, you know, from tariffs to reshoring, reindustrializing.

• 16:05Mike Rowe?

  Like this idea that, you know, can we do it? Like, can America actually get back to the business of making things?

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:13Mike Rowe?

  You answer that question in the affirmative.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  We do.

• 16:16Mike Rowe?

  You're doing it.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  And this, this really does actually relate exactly to your message. And here's how. What you preach about so often with apprenticeships, the trades. This is the evolution of that. So I, I went through an apprenticeship. You know, I, I was a struggling custom knife maker in 2009 when the housing market crashed and $5,000 knives were, were the first thing to leave people's budgets. And so I had four young kids. You know, kind of a starving artist knife maker and I went and got, um, well, honestly, really I started as a groundman, but I got an apprenticeship to become a lineman. That apprenticeship, leading into becoming a journeyman lineman, allowed me to put a little bit of money in the bank

• 17:01Speaker 02

  and take a look, kind of step back from my business and, and say, I want to start this Montana knife company that I'd been dreaming of doing, but the apprenticeship and the, and becoming a journeyman gave me the, basically a little bit of money to be able to survive and then build this on the side. And the thing about what we're doing is. We're showing that you don't have to be somebody special with a business degree to grow what we've grown. If you've gone through an apprenticeship and you're, you know, a journeyman or a foreman on a crew figuring out how to put a pipeline over a mountain, or build a power line over a mountain, or plumb a giant apartment complex, you are problem solving every day.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  You're managing people, you're leading, you're following plans, you're working, you know, you're dealing with finances. You're doing everything that you do to build a business, you're doing in your day job. And I think what people need to see is you can get that apprenticeship, you can put 10 years in and gain that experience. And you can go leave that and chase your dream and have the confidence that I've been doing all this in my career. I've been problem solving, you know, I've been leading people. I've been seeing how not to be led. I mean, honestly, that's when I was at a big corporation at a power company. I took more out of there about how I didn't want to treat my people than how I do.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  You know, and so I think what you are doing and what the young folks who are getting these apprenticeships and going into the trades will find is there's some of them that will come up with an idea and they'll transition out of that into chasing their own dreams and building their own version of Montana Knife Company in their interest.

• 18:41Mike Rowe?

  Well, it's interesting. Um, you know, I thought of you a few hours ago, not just because I knew you were coming in, but because I was talking to this woman, Mackenzie Price, who runs these things called Alpha Schools. And it's rooted, really it's an attempt to save public education, which as you may have noticed is kind of crap the bed in a fairly spectacular fashion. From sea to shining sea.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:05Mike Rowe?

  And she refers a lot to the Socratic method and the Aristotelian way of learning, which was the original mentorship. So Plato mentors Socrates, who mentors Aristotle, who teaches Alexander, who goes on to be pretty great. And like run the world.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:25Mike Rowe?

  That's an apprenticeship program. You know, way before we use that word.

• 19:34Mike Rowe?

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• 20:56Mike Rowe?

  You know, the first time I talked to you, you talked about this theme as well. And I've just become so convinced in the last 18 months that the apprenticeship model, the mentor model, it's not negotiable. We must have it. We must have it back in this country. We must have it in our schools. We must have it on the job site. We must have it. The entrepreneurs must have it. But so too must Jensen Wong. And, right? It's just, there's just no getting around it. And so I'm really interested. I wanted to ask you, how do you teach the business of doing what you do? You make arguably the highest quality blade in the country.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:39Mike Rowe?

  How do you teach people how to do that?

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Well, you know, to be honest, it's something that I've had to learn and transition even how we do it because the way that we build our knives is not the way I custom forged every single knife. And so I even had the opposite of me teaching someone how to do that. I had to go find people that had the skills to build these knives at scale and then take what I know about knives and put it in that model, right? When you're using CNC machines, computer controlled, you know, milling machines and stuff like that. It's not stuff that I used in my custom knife making, but I knew what made a really good blade. I knew how to heat treat it. I knew, you know, the geometry of blades. And so when you take that custom, and I think it can be this

• 22:24Speaker 02

  way for other, you know, you, you take a custom home builder and then how do you build thousands of apartment, you know, units, one at a time, right? And so part of it is, is also going out and finding people who are experts in their area and just empowering them to do what they know how

• 22:41Mike Rowe?

  to do. Let them be great.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  We're bringing in the entire heat treat process in-house. And far as I know, we'll be the only knife company in America heat treating all of our knives in-house.

• 22:50Mike Rowe?

  Why is that significant? Why should people give a damn?

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Uh, that's the heart and soul of the blade. I mean, if you don't heat treat the steel correctly, it's not going to perform. It's not going to cut. It's not going to be tough. And again, I think it's just proving, everybody has just settled in. Frankly, I went against my own board, like my board of directors will love to hear this, but like my board of directors who are very, very wise businessmen, and I'm not denigrating them because it's quite the opposite. I've learned a lot from them, but they told us not to buy land, not to build a building, not to buy the equipment. Okay. Well, in the last 18 months, I've spent $18 million on building a building and buying equipment, all against their advice. But they're now seeing the benefit of I now control my own supply chain.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  I'm not asking this, you know, when I started this in my garage, I needed to have blades cut in New York. I needed to have blades ground over here, right? I need to have knives heat treated in Pennsylvania. But now you're sitting in line behind the big dogs. You're at the whim of the UPS driver, making it on time to get your parts to you, to put them all together, to just find out that the people you had make your parts made them wrong and you got to start all back over.

• 24:01Mike Rowe?

  The list of things that have to go right.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:03Mike Rowe?

  For you to even have a shot at being brilliant is mind boggling.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  It was mind boggling and it was proved to be very challenging at times. Now, it's equally challenging buying that much equipment and trying to find employees that actually know how to run that stuff, right? And this is the other thing I'll tell people, you know, it's not just becoming linemen and becoming plumbers. And I've heard you talk about it, but please become a machinist. Please get into learning how to heat treat. We and the manufacturing industry, the only way we're going to build a manufacturing in the U.S. Is to have an employee pool that we can actually employ. And we are going to be doing, you know, some basically apprenticeships and whatnot through our company.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  But for right now, we're realizing like my Swiss lathe guy, he was a young machinist and the Swiss.

• 24:55Mike Rowe?

  I got a lathe guy, he's in Bern, where is he in Zurich? Where is he?

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Well, a Swiss lathe is a lathe that makes screws.

• 25:02Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Right? We could not find an employee to do that. And that's a $750,000 machine that we bought and we could not find someone to operate it. So we flew the tech in from the company and he started teaching a young machinist in my shop that had never seen this machine. And he's now running it. But we are needing more of those kinds of professionals, you know? We need programmers, I need design engineers, process engineers. You know, we are making parts on scale and that's actually really hard to find. You can find a machinist that makes one part here and there. But we're making hundreds of thousands of parts now. You know, we'll make 200,000 knives this year.

• 25:40Mike Rowe?

  Well, at what point is it efficacious for you to, to buy the lathe?

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Well, we bought the lathe. The problem is you can't, it's finding the employee. You know, when we, we were looking at it and it's like, we have to own that supply chain because by owning that lathe, we can now custom make our own screw at the exact length, at the thread pitch that we want. It opens up all of our design.

• 26:06Mike Rowe?

  And you can do that in Montana?

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Yep. We're doing it in our own building right now.

• 26:10Mike Rowe?

  What about, you told me a story about a grinder. I think it was a grinder.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 26:14Mike Rowe?

  This is another not inexpensive tool that's critical to your, your delivery process. But, but that was in, that was in Germany, was it?

• 26:25Speaker 02

  That's right. Yeah. It's a bevel grinder.

• 26:27Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  And there's two manufacturers of bevel grinders on the planet and they're both in Germany. It's a bevel grinding machine that grinds basically the face of the blade down to an edge. And they grind lawnmower blades, anything that's a blade basically in America is ground on these bevel grinders.

• 26:45Mike Rowe?

  In Germany.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  But they're made in Germany. And so we just got our, that grinder you're talking about, we just got that in about five weeks ago from Germany. And you know, the discussion at that point was around tariffs and that was kind of a bit of a contention. Take all the politics out of it for a minute. It didn't make a lot of sense to me to tariff manufacturing equipment. When you're trying to build.

• 27:09Mike Rowe?

  Re-infiguring manufacturing.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  Right. It'd be different if I chose not to buy an American grinder, but there is no such thing as an American bevel grinder.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  There's nuance in these laws that sometimes things get.

• 27:23Mike Rowe?

  What that grinder costs? Like what would it cost just to buy it in a non tariff?

• 27:28Speaker 02

  About $800,000.

• 27:30Mike Rowe?

  And with the tariff?

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Uh, well, what's 30% tariff on that?

• 27:34Mike Rowe?

  $240,000.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. So.

• 27:37Mike Rowe?

  So what a, what a fascinating.

• 27:41Mike Rowe?

  I think we're both rooting for this president. In so far as we want to see rein- we want to see manufacturing reinvigorated.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:54Mike Rowe?

  What kind of position does that put you in? Please don't share anything that's not appropriate to share, but I just want people to understand that the business of employing 121 people in Missoula.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:07Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. I mean, it's a going concern and it's capital intensive.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:12Mike Rowe?

  And this is a policy. For me, I mean, I want to see this country make that bevel grinder.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:22Mike Rowe?

  I want somebody in that business to go, you know something? There's been a shift in the wind and we think there's a market here, so let's make them here. And so in order to get that to happen, maybe there's some logic, long-term in that policy, but short-term, I do think it's fair to say, you know, you're taking it in the neck.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, all politics aside, I don't care who you vote for. These need to be policies that are bipartisan. I mean, we are, you hire Democrats and Republicans, right? This is about providing, you know, true stability, even from a defense standpoint, like the government today could now walk into my building and say, hey, you don't make knives anymore, we need you to make this part, right? We're in a, we're in a war and we're short on this, or whatever, from a national defense, national security standpoint. The country, to a small degree, is now better because we are, we exist. And if there's 5,000 more Montana Knife Company-style manufacturers all over this country, our supply chain and our, our national defenses is better off for it.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  But like in America, in 1979, there were 19 million manufacturing jobs. Today, there's 12 million. Okay, so that's a 7 million loss, that's not great, but then when you think there's 125 million more Americans than then.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  That's a problem. And these manufacturing jobs, they spin off other jobs, right? When we make knives here, we then need parts made, you know, in Seattle. We need things, even if it's fixturing for the machines, right? There's all these ancillary things that we need to have built.

• 30:08Mike Rowe?

  The sheath?

• 30:09Speaker 02

  The sheath, you know, Francesco with Teton Leather in Idaho.

• 30:12Mike Rowe?

  I saw in the video.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  I don't know how many employees she has now. She went from her basement to now eight or nine employees, just basically supporting Montana Knife Company and then the other stuff that she does. Fantastic people. Montana Block, they make our cutting boards and our magnetic blocks and Proof Razors, another really cool, American-made razor brand for your face. And we do collabs. We try to collab Aries Watches.

• 30:38Mike Rowe?

  Really? Proof Razors? What makes them great?

• 30:43Speaker 02

  Just the way that the razors are built, the way that the steel that they use in their blades. And then it's actually the body of the razor, that the way that they're all manufactured out of aluminum and powder coated and they're beautiful. And they also frankly, they, I was like, that's, you know, it's a razor and I got it and I shaved with it. I was like, these are cool. Like they work really, really well.

• 31:04Mike Rowe?

  Well, that, look, that's why I'm asking you. I think everybody is susceptible to, you know, it's a razor. I mean, how excited can you get?

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Same as a knife.

• 31:14Mike Rowe?

  A lot of people would say the same as a knife.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:16Mike Rowe?

  You know what? A lot of people say the same for a car.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:19Mike Rowe?

  So does it start and stop when I need it to? Is it reliable? Can I afford it? It's like, ah, you know? So we have to decide constantly, every day, all of us, what to get excited about and by. Unless, unless the question is, we have to decide how to get excited or what sort of process.

• 31:41Mike Rowe?

  Excites us, not necessarily the finished product. Assume it's excellent, assume it's a proof razor, assume it's an MKC knife.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Well, even think about passing things down like that proof razor or that knife. If you buy a BIC razor from Walmart and you give it to your dad for Christmas, it doesn't really seem like much of a gift, right? It seems like more of a hint that he should shave more often, right? But if you give him a proof razor for Christmas, or you give him a Montana knife or an Aries watch, you're giving him something that was made in America that has real value to it. You know, that's something, all of those are items that, you know, can be passed down. Or like, oh, I've got dad's old razor, right? Like, nobody really cares if you have dad's old plastic BIC razor, but that custom-made, American-made proof razor or Montana knife is, actually has real value because of the people that made it.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  And that's why, when you come to our manufacturing facility in Missoula, it's not just a manufacturing facility. We put a Black Rifle Coffee in it in a retail store. And when you come in and you order coffee and sit down at the table, we have giant glass windows that look out into the manufacturing. So you can see where your money is being spent. All right, this year alone, we are going to spend a fuzz over $15 million in salary and benefits for our employees. Not one of those jobs existed five years ago in our county. There's 78,000 people in our county. That has a major impact. And those people, those customers, those crazy people that drove from Maine

• 33:15Speaker 02

  or the bayou to come to our grand opening, are supporting the people behind that glass to raise their families, to take that money and spend it on something else. That's what American manufacturing does. And when you see so many of these buildings along the interstate. You know, these big cinder block buildings with not a single window in it. You don't see the humans inside of them.

• 33:36Mike Rowe?

  Nope.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  You know, and that's why there's glass. We call it built in public. We want to take you on tours of our facility. We don't have anything to hide. We put these vlogs up on our YouTube every Friday night and we highlight our employees because I want you to see Tristan's face, Melissa's face, the people that you are supporting. I mean, heck, you, Mike Rowe, wearing our T-shirt, right? When you're out doing your talks or our hat or the average guy in Florida that has a roofing business, when you're wearing that hat or that shirt, it has meaning. You stand for something.

• 34:17Mike Rowe?

  The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap. They have an important role to play for sure, but if we're serious about reinvigorating the skilled trades on a national level, we need more organizations like Skills USA making a real difference on a local level. These guys have been around since 1965 and today they are relevant like never before with hundreds of chapters in schools all over the country and hundreds of thousands of students participating and competing every year. Nobody is doing more to train the next generation of skilled workers than Skills USA. And I'm encouraging you to at least consider being a part of this movement. Skills USA advisors and volunteers aren't just teaching trades.

• 35:02Mike Rowe?

  They're launching careers and strengthening the backbone of our country by mentoring the next generation of industry leaders. In high school, you could be among the people who are making this movement explode. Join the skilled trades movement. Support career and technical education programs through Skills USA. There's no better way to do it. You can volunteer at a local chapter. You can start a chapter in your own town or you can just go to their website and see the impact for yourself and see too, how easy it is to get involved. Thousands of kids are being introduced to the trades in a way that's absolutely positively moving the needle. The goal is a million members by 2030. I think it's doable. I'm doing what I can to help them.

• 35:45Mike Rowe?

  Learn more at skillsusa.org/mike. That's skillsusa.org/mike. I'm talking.

• 36:00Mike Rowe?

  You know what, man? It's very true. I wish I knew it. Like, before I started doing it, it would have made me feel more deliberate. But on Dirty Jobs, everybody figured I was bald because I was always wearing a cap. It was always a different cap. And it was always the cap of the business who invited me in to get dirty and learn stuff. And I just did it because it seemed polite. But it wasn't until I got a letter from a guy who ran a very specific type of farm, who said, every time that show airs, we might be... He said, it was great for business, but never mind the business. I've got employees who care deeply about that logo. And when they saw that logo

• 36:45Mike Rowe?

  on international television, well, their hearts grew two sizes that day.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  There was pride.

• 36:50Mike Rowe?

  And dignity.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:52Mike Rowe?

  And that, you know, I don't use those words a lot because they, you know, they're often overused and they can be manipulative. But it is absolutely a real thing. A powerful thing, you know, and...

• 37:05Speaker 02

  You, I'm sure you, to a certain degree, realize the impact you're having. But at our grand opening, a guy walks up to me and he was like, hey, if you ever see Mike Rowe, tell him what he's doing is working. And I was like, oh, really? How's that? And he said, well, I teach at a trade school in Spokane. And I've had several students come through my trade school that have had a Mike Rowe Works scholarship. I was like, no, that's cool. I'll tell him.

• 37:27Mike Rowe?

  That's super cool.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  It's... Whether you're Mike Rowe or you're just a regular guy, when you, when you put that hat on and you wear it, it really does matter to a company like us. I mean, when... It's hard for us to advertise knives, right? We get shadow banned and we actually, we literally can't advertise on Fox Television. Because they have a... I don't know if it's a weapons policy or whatever. But we get, whether it's Fox or, or... And sorry if I'm naming networks I shouldn't be naming on here, but...

• 37:56Mike Rowe?

  Sorry.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  But not just that, but like the meta ads we try to run. We're not a normal company where we can run ads. And so by having the average American buy a t-shirt, it's also hard to rep a knife, right? It's like you're not walking down the street being like, hey, do you see my knife? Wearing that t-shirt or that hat, and it's not just of our company. Any company you think is cool that's doing something that's good for our country, wear their apparel, wear their hat. It makes a statement and it's, uh, it helps make, frankly, our country better.

• 38:27Mike Rowe?

  I think you're too... Modest, or maybe self-effacing to say what I want you to say. So I'm gonna say it as you, okay?

• 38:36Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 38:38Mike Rowe?

  We spoke a couple of weeks ago. You invited me again to this grand opening and I'm sick to death that I couldn't be there. There's just no way I could work it out. But I really wanted to be there. And you told me in that conversation that you were frustrated because, in your opinion, the national media should have been there. Where was the Today Show?

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:03Mike Rowe?

  Where was CBS This Morning? This is the story of a guy who used to get our electricity to us, who decides, okay, I'm gonna hang out my shingle. He only risks everything and he creates 121 jobs in Missoula. You're looking at a, it sounds like a million dollar monthly payroll. Your company must be 60, 70 million dollars now.

• 39:32Mike Rowe?

  And so you're looking around, tell me if I got this right, but you're looking around going, what do I have to do?

• 39:40Mike Rowe?

  What do I have to do to get the country's attention?

• 39:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:44Mike Rowe?

  I'm creating jobs, I'm doing it the right way, I'm paying the tariffs, it hurts. I'm the very manufacturer you want to see reinvigorated. And I am, but it's tough, it's hard, it's scary. You're raising four kids, you're providing for 121 families.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:05Mike Rowe?

  Can I get an amen? Can I get a, can I get an ENG crew to show up?

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:10Mike Rowe?

  Can I, like, how is that not a national story? Now, you didn't use those exact words, but I could hear it in your voice. So, you know, like, on the one hand, I'm looking at this video. It's an incredible love letter to everything you've accomplished. On the other hand, I hear... Frustration.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:32Mike Rowe?

  So if there's a question in there, it's how do you, how do you not be discouraged? Cause you're Sisyphus, man. You're pushing the rock up the hill.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Well, it is discouraging or frustrating when you can't get national media to tell a positive story because it's, there's a self-serving part, right? Like we're trying to grow and we want to sell more knives because that creates more growth. And quite frankly, we have to pay for this facility and pay for those, those employees, but it's more than that. It's a true belief in that this is how we save, I guess, our country. This is how we make our country better. It's through

• 41:09Speaker 02

  the motivation that people might receive by seeing this story. There's so much negativity when you turn on the news and we're at war and the gas prices and you just pick the topic. It's always seems to be negativity. And I think it's easy for the guy who, you know, just turned out as a journeyman plumber, a journeyman lineman or whatever, to think, can he really go anywhere from there, right? As he topped out, has an idea of this fly tying business that he has or whatever it is, right? A special material that could be used for, for building. And he doesn't quite have the guts to do it because he's never seen it been done. Well, no, it's been done. It's being done right, right here in Frenchtown, Missoula, Montana.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  And if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere in the country. And that's probably my biggest frustration of not having national media talk about it is because I want people to go recreate we've done, what we've done. And see, we're a direct to consumer company. We didn't even do it through Cabela's or through Bass, you know, Bass Pro. We have done it all through sales on our own website and my wife was doing all the fulfillment in our basement of our house. And she's still doing it now in this building with our employees. Like she runs that fulfillment. And I just want people to see like we design it, we prototype it, we test it, we now manufacture

• 42:36Speaker 02

  it all in our house. We sell it and we ship it. How many companies in the country do that? And we need to tell that story that that is possible.

• 42:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, you do. So along with my frustration with the national media for not showing up and doing an obvious site location piece, Meta, what are you doing? It's a knife. It's not a box of plutonium. It's a tool and it's a tool that helped build this country, frankly.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Well, look at what you can find on social media.

• 43:12Mike Rowe?

  I mean, as long as I'm on my soapbox, I'm currently featured in five promotional campaigns on Facebook. None of them are sanctioned. It's all AI. It's, you know, okay, so, so these nefarious pricks and God knows what little backwater somewhere with a laptop in a basement have created. It's diabolical. It's they're defrauding, never mind DeWalt or Yeti or like five big brands. They're all with me. All right. So I'm all in these things out there with some bullshit

• 43:52Mike Rowe?

  invitation to enter a sweepstakes. And these guys get your information and then all kinds of mischief unfolds. So like I don't mean to pick on Facebook. I got six and a half million reasons on Facebook not to start trouble, but it's not just my fans and it's not just Yeti's fans. It's Facebook's customers.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I'm glad you brought that up. And it's something I need to say, like if because of this podcast, you want to come check out our website or you want to buy one of our knives, be very careful because now this is another problem that I'm having with our government right now is they're not protecting the American businesses well enough and consumers against China.

• 44:34Mike Rowe?

  The IP.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  The IP and there are over 4,000 fake Montana knife company that we can find right now. Websites carrying Montana Knife Company knives with our branding, our logo, fake knives that are being made in China and being sold. One of the worst has traditionally, we keep after them with our lawyers, but has been Timu.

• 44:55Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Our knives were, have been littered on Timu and it'll be interesting to see after this drops if they, we sent them a letter here just a couple of weeks ago, so hopefully they're down, but uh, name the site, they're all over the place. You just start Googling them. If it's not on our website, because we don't allow our knives to be sold on any other website, period. But they're everywhere and they're, we get them in to get, people get them in there, they, they send them to us saying, "Hey, I got this knife from you guys and it's not sharp." And we have to write back and say, "You didn't, that's not our knife."

• 45:26Mike Rowe?

  So people understand, all your knives come with a, essentially a lifetime warranty, like you'll, you'll sharpen those things.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  For free.

• 45:34Mike Rowe?

  For free, for the end of time.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 45:36Mike Rowe?

  So somebody buys a Montana knife because it's labeled Montana knife. It's your logo.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 45:41Mike Rowe?

  It's your model, it's your make, everything looks legit, but it's not off your site. And they get it and it doesn't hold the, the edge. They send it to you and you have to tell them,

• 45:54Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 45:55Mike Rowe?

  "I didn't make this knife, brother."

• 45:56Speaker 02

  Right. You got robbed.

• 45:58Mike Rowe?

  That's it.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  It hurts. It takes dollars, those people intended to buy a knife from us, so it takes dollars out of the manufacturer's pocket and it also robs dollars from the American consumer. It's a double whammy and where is our government on that? That should be an easy bipartisan, "Hey, Timu, hey whoever else, Alibaba, we are gonna absolutely slam you guys for this." Like you have to protect, if you want to grow American manufacturing, you have to protect the manufacturers and the consumer. And I don't understand how that's not a hundred to zero vote in the Senate.

• 46:35Mike Rowe?

  I don't know what to tell you, brother. I got slapped pretty hard four years ago for sharing a story that suggested that Hunter Biden's laptop may in fact be a smoking gun. I didn't do it to grind a political ax. I did it because that was a giant story and it was very consequential. They have the power to knock that down.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:00Mike Rowe?

  Right?

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:01Mike Rowe?

  Surely we have the power to keep this kind of thing from happening. There's a friend of this podcast, a guy called Arthur Lee. You probably don't know him, but I bet you've seen his product. He, he made a thing a few years ago called LifeVac.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 47:16Mike Rowe?

  And a LifeVac is a device, if your kid, or really an adult, anybody starts to choke, you just put this on their mouth and you squeeze the thing and it essentially pulls the blockage.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 47:31Mike Rowe?

  I mean, it's incredible.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:32Mike Rowe?

  He came on here, how many lives did this thing save, Chuck?

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Twenty-two, based upon somebody who either listened to the podcast or someone they know listened to the podcast and bought one.

• 47:44Mike Rowe?

  In this, just our audience.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, twenty-two.

• 47:47Mike Rowe?

  That's amazing. He saved over 5,000 lives.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:50Mike Rowe?

  Now, China is ripping them off like crazy.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Instantly.

• 47:55Mike Rowe?

  Now, the problem here, it, there is a corollary. It's, it's not just that the knife doesn't hold the blade. It's not just, oh, that's disappointing. This friggin' thing doesn't work.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:06Mike Rowe?

  And your kid has 60 seconds and now you can't, I mean, that, so I don't understand why this isn't DEFCON, what is it, one or five? What's the bad one?

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:21Mike Rowe?

  Looking at that.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  Five sounds bigger.

• 48:24Mike Rowe?

  Five sounds bigger, but DEFCON one might be the bad one. I'm, I'm not sure. Whatever it is, all hands on deck.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:30Mike Rowe?

  It's not just mischief, you know? And I'm afraid that if it keeps going like this, and honestly, I'm not really afraid of this, but I think, I think the only way through is for the default position, for the average person, to assume that whatever they're seeing is a lie.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:50Mike Rowe?

  And until we get there, then, you know, the social media companies are going to continue to profit from these very scams, because it's advertising and, and they're making money. So until people just look around and go, you know what? What's the point in advertising?

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:07Mike Rowe?

  I'm sorry to hijack the conversation, but I

• 49:09Speaker 01

  No, it's

• 49:10Mike Rowe?

  I raise money for my foundation every day with videos like these.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:17Mike Rowe?

  And these bums are taking name and likeness from those scholarship videos and using them.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:23Mike Rowe?

  Right? So, yeah, boo hoo, poor Mike, whatever, I'll be fine, but the bottom's liable to fall out of the whole thing. And if the public loses their trust in that.

• 49:38Mike Rowe?

  If you work in boots all day long and your feet sweat, I feel your pain. And I'd recommend trying the socks that I wear every day from Camel City Mill. These guys sent me a box as a gift long before they sponsored this podcast. And I started wearing them and eventually I reached out to them because I love the product. And I wanted more sponsors on the podcast who make things in America. And now here they are again sponsoring another episode. Camel City Mill makes their socks in North Carolina with American wool in an American factory. Their merino wool blends help wick sweat away from your skin. And their no sweat vent lets heat and moisture escape. That helps keep your feet dry and comfortable when you're spending long days in work boots.

• 50:23Mike Rowe?

  They also reinforce the heel and the toe with double plated nylon to stand up to the wear. Those boots put on your socks, remember it's not the feet that wear out your socks. It's your boots and they back their socks with a 10 year durability guarantee. If you get a hole or a tear in the first decade, they'll replace them for free. If you're a hardworking guy dealing with sweaty, uncomfortable feet, I'm telling you, these are worth trying. I wear mine every day and I'm glad to have the company on the podcast. CamelCityMill.com Use code ROW. Get 10% off my favorite work socks. CamelCityMill.com Code ROW.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  That is where, you know, I'm generally kind of a limited government guy, but that is where government, that's their role is to protect the American citizen, whether it's national defense or through commerce policy like this, you have to protect again, the American consumer. It does, it makes it incredibly hard when you're, you're borrowing money to build buildings and to hire people to get on the internet and see 4,000 fake websites, you know, and-

• 51:31Mike Rowe?

  All selling your thing.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  Your product, exactly.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  That's a DEFCON 1 situation. That's the worst.

• 51:37Mike Rowe?

  That's the worst, right?

• 51:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:39Mike Rowe?

  It's all backwards, right? It does feel like five ought to be city on fire kind of thing.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  You know, but look at golf. It's like if you get the highest score, you've lost.

• 51:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  So.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  It will be interesting, like when we launch our folder to see how fast they've copied it. I mean, I gotta hand it to China, like they have gotten, it took them a few years before we ever saw our first one. It was really just probably at the beginning of last year that we saw our first fake. And we're like, at first it was like, oh, we've made it. There's a fake. It was kind of like- Almost like, hey, we're starting to become a real company. China's faking us. And then it was six months later and it was thousands of knives. And it was like, oh, this is, this is a problem.

• 52:18Mike Rowe?

  It's a problem.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. And if they're doing it, the, let's face it, Montana Knife Company is not on the national scale, really a household name. We would love to be someday. But if they're doing that to us, just imagine the suction and the drag on our economy that they're having. If they're doing that to small, little Montana Knife Company, what is that to, you know, all these big brands, not to mention all the mom and pop brands out there?

• 52:43Mike Rowe?

  It's unspeakable in its implications and its ramifications. I mean, every supply chain that I know of is tied in to this to some degree. But I mean, obviously during COVID, we're looking at our, our medical supply. We're looking at our, you know, antibiotics and so.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  And you're right there. The same, I've heard my buddies who were in the medical field talking about tourniquets, you know, these cheap Chinese tourniquets. And there again, it's just like with your friend's life fact. You're talking about a, I mean, like you say, at the end of the day, a knife, whatever, right? But a tourniquet, that's in a life-saving moment that if that fails because you bought a cheap one off of Alibaba and you thought the $19 product was as good as the $50 product, you know, somebody dies.

• 53:34Mike Rowe?

  Well, like we're going down the hierarchy of consequential bad acts. I mean, there's not a lot of distance between what you're talking about and the fact that, I don't know, like every two or 3,000 Adderall tablets might have a little fentanyl in there, right? It might have a little bit in there. Like, what would we do if, if the announcement was, listen? Um, your favorite brand of beer is still available. It's just that every thousand bottles or so is, you know, filled with poison.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Somebody's gonna die.

• 54:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah. So how we go, you know, just lay out one in a thousand, the odds are still with you. Enjoy that Adderall and wash it down with a Heineken and hope for the best, you know?

• 54:12Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 54:13Mike Rowe?

  So, yeah, you're, I mean, it has to stop in the same way trust in every major public institution has, has eroded. Just the, the basic, can I even believe what I'm looking at, you know?

• 54:26Speaker 02

  Well, and it's, it, that's just becoming, I mean, let's face it with AI and especially with you who makes a living off of your, your voice and face. I mean, they've gotten so much better at that, even in just the last six months. Imagine how good they're gonna be in two years at that.

• 54:40Mike Rowe?

  You know who's pissed off that I've been meaning to reach out is, um, Morgan Freeman.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 54:46Mike Rowe?

  He's as angry as I am, probably angrier. Cause he's a, it's his, what do they call it? NIL, name, image likeness, right? That's really all, all you have to sell if you're in this line of work.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:59Mike Rowe?

  It can all be co-opted in so many ways, but I don't know, man. It's been a very weird day for me because the person here before you made a very persuasive case that AI is the best hope we have of saving our education system as it exists. Far and away the best hope.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:19Mike Rowe?

  And I'm persuaded.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  I think she's right. And I'll tell you, we are doing right now fully integrating, trying to fully integrate AI into what we do. I mean, I talked to a very interesting person that found me through your podcast the first time in 2024. He reached out to me. And he is one of the top AI engineers at Google. And, you know, share his name with you off of this, but, uh, he reached out because he believes in the American manufacturing story and he thinks AI can play a really great part in that. And offered to basically help us even as we start to integrate AI into what we do, help us even potentially build like AI systems for our manufacturing floor.

• 56:02Mike Rowe?

  Don't leave here without giving me that name or Chuck. I just spoke at Google's AI conference a week ago.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Really?

• 56:10Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  No, this is 18 months ago.

• 56:12Mike Rowe?

  Well, I guarantee you, man, if they haven't fired him yet, he was there. I mean, he's, these guys are all paying attention and people should know this too. I haven't made a big deal of it here yet, but it, I mentioned it to you when we spoke. Everybody's looking at manufacturing and skilled trades with one eye and with the other, they're looking at AI and they're coming together in ways that I didn't predict. You know, I knew we were going to get to an existential, you know, splat period with the skills gap, but I didn't know that it was going to be AI that accelerated it or made electricians or linemen. You know, the lineman college advertises on this podcast now all the time.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  I mean, power and water frankly are going to be our two biggest issues as a nation. Power is quickly outrunning the water. The water issues, I think in 20 years is going to be a big one. You just fly into here and look down and go, that doesn't work forever.

• 57:14Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  You know, but power as a lineman and let's face it, I don't want a new power line going through my backyard.

• 57:21Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 57:22Speaker 02

  Right? Nobody wants, if you buy a ranch in Wyoming, you don't want a power line running through your new ranch.

• 57:26Mike Rowe?

  Honey, they're putting it at data center.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:28Mike Rowe?

  It's going to be great.

• 57:29Speaker 02

  Nobody wants that, but we have to have an upgrade to our infrastructure in a big way.

• 57:35Mike Rowe?

  We must.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  And so the power issue with these data centers and whatnot is going to be, it's becoming a real problem. But with the AI technology, you know, you can be a doomsdayer and, and I compared a lot to social media. There's a lot of bad about social media and there's a lot of lives that social media ruined. Montana Knife Company grew to 120 employees in five years because the world is tiny because of social media.

• 58:03Mike Rowe?

  And MicroWorks is going to give away $10 million this year because of Facebook.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:08Mike Rowe?

  I couldn't have done it without Facebook.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  And we were just talking about Meta and Facebook and, you know, two things can be true. Meta and Facebook could be better and could allow us to advertise and push the word out better, but at the same time, it makes the world so small. When I started making knives as an 11-year-old in 1992, you had to get lucky to get an article in a magazine, or you had to go to a trade show, to a gun show. There was no way to get seen. And now you can take a picture and a million people can see it. So, and it is what makes it possible to be in Weibo County in Montana. Did you know there is a consolid, and this is another big concern, I bounce all over

• 58:51Speaker 02

  here, but there's a consolidating of, I wouldn't say necessarily power, but wealth, it's consolidating into these cities. And Montana is an example of, there's five or six towns, cities in Montana that are growing. Did you know in like four counties in eastern Montana, there hasn't been a single business application put in in like two and a half years for a new business? These towns are shrinking, they're completely dying. And what I'm trying to get across is, you don't have to be in these big areas to succeed. You can start a business from your garage like we did and use the power of social media and Shopify and, you know, AI.

• 59:33Speaker 02

  And that's the thing, back to AI, you can be in tiny town Montana and have an AI assistant and AI help you write contracts and you can be a guy.

• 59:44Mike Rowe?

  Build a website.

• 59:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, starting to build a business while you're also working for the rancher down the road.

• 59:50Mike Rowe?

  I just think it's a, we're not the first to make the point, but it's worth repeating because like.

• 59:57Mike Rowe?

  Big brains, big think tanks are wrestling with ways to save small town America. And the tool we're talking about right now, in the same way I think it can save education, to your point, I think it could just be transformational. What better way? Why do people leave?

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:14Mike Rowe?

  Why do they leave, you know, and come back so infrequently? It's because there's a promise of something better somewhere else.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  And you know, back to your, you know, just thinking about the economy in these small towns and why people leave, like these kids are leaving Montana because they can't afford to stay, right? The median house price, I think in Missoula is almost $600,000. It's almost $800,000 in Bozeman. So how do you graduate high school and stay? The apprenticeship programs and the tradespeople are going to be some of the highest paid people. I swear they're gonna be some of the highest paid people. They already are. Some of the highest paid people in our area in Montana. And that's how these kids can't, you know, go to college and start life with $100,000 in debt.

• 1:01:03Mike Rowe?

  Well, unfortunately, they can.

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  And even myself, you know, I've got like Tristan, right? He started with me when he was a senior in high school. He could have gone to school. He had full rides for scholarships to school. He kept putting it off and putting it off because he was seeing the growth of MKC. He's now basically got a four-year business degree under Andrew, who worked at Amazon, who works for me that runs our operations. And now Tristan's, you know, making really, really good money. I don't want to put his finances out there, but making really, really good money with zero debt and a true, I would say, master's degree in business in five years.

• 1:01:42Mike Rowe?

  And a front row seat to the business of making a thing.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:45Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, man. It's mind boggling how hard our government and our media make it. When you look around at the list of things that ought to be encouraged and you see the way they're being affirmatively. discouraged.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Mike Rowe?

  I don't know how to fix it, but I knew halfway through our last conversation that I wanted to have you back soon to talk about all this because I really, I really think people need to hear your story and they need to understand that whether it's making a knife or a razor or a watch.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:02:20Mike Rowe?

  If you start with a commitment to do it here, you know, you met my friend Byrd over at American Giant. Same story, man. This is again and again and again, you're playing from a different rulebook.

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:34Mike Rowe?

  You know?

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  And what I love about like the knives we've made, like this knife right here, you know, it'd be different if I was sitting in front of you and I had somehow grown a giant car manufacturing company, right? Like that's, it seems like a car manufacturing company seems so.

• 1:02:50Mike Rowe?

  Grand.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  Gaunt, grand, right? Like, you know, it's like the average guy is going to be like, well, I can't start a car manufacturing company, right? Our knives all the way along have been basically this three-piece knife, right? It's so simple. And the point of that is if you can do it with a knife, that did the world need another knife company?

• 1:03:11Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  No. Right? Did the world need Black Rifle Coffee? No. It's an idea. It's a movement, right?

• 1:03:19Mike Rowe?

  Excuse me. The world didn't need your finished product in either case. They need your dream and they need your passion and they need your hope and they need your initiative because that's what makes, that's what bipeds have.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:39Mike Rowe?

  That matters.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  And with encouragement from you, I'm actually going to start to develop my podcast in a little different way with telling that story a little bit and trying to provide. And share the story of the struggles of starting a business and actually tell people from my perspective, and I honestly, we are just getting started. It's funny, I say, when moving into this building, we actually just got going. We moved out of my backyard four months ago. All 80 employees back then were reporting to work at my house. Right? I had to tear down my horse fence to build that building. Okay, we were competing with

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  the big dogs and doing all this and growing this brand from my basement, from my garage, from my horse pasture. So we have only been in this building four months. Where we go from here is going to be just as hard as where we came from. And I want to share that with people and share the stories, the lessons, just as I've been really doing all the way along. And but I want to do it in a bit of a more podcast format where I can take certain topics. And I hope people take it from not a guy with an MBA that was trained, that's got all this experience, but from a blue collar, my dad was a tobacco operator.

• 1:05:03Mike Rowe?

  From a lineman who ignored his board.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:06Mike Rowe?

  It's true. I mean, I mean, but look, I wanted to make that point earlier, just so you don't get too much grief when you go home. But in defense of your board, you know, it's full of smart people, right?

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, brilliant.

• 1:05:20Mike Rowe?

  And so what don't they know that you do? What do they know that you don't? And why ultimately would you take the reverse commute like that?

• 1:05:37Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's workforce. Academy by Meta. This is a five week, highly immersive, pre apprenticeship program. That gets you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately.

• 1:06:19Mike Rowe?

  I'm talking about AI proof, six figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's workforce academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago, and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade. If you or your spouse or your kid or your grandkid are looking for a straight path into a career with no cost at all,

• 1:07:04Mike Rowe?

  check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com slash America's workforce academy. That's meta.com slash America's workforce academy.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  Well, to cover a topic that I would cover on, on my podcast would be, this is why you don't sell out to the VC company that takes control over your business and tells you, the guy that knows the customer, that is the customer, what to do with your brainchild and your baby, right? And they didn't know what I knew. And what they would have done had they had control and owned the company versus they're an advisory board, right? These are brilliant people and they aren't necessarily wrong. And in fact, in the end, they might be right. If the book someday is the rise and fall of Montana Knife Company, they will have been right.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  And their point was you can always offload contractors, right? If I'm having blades cut in Pennsylvania and blades ground over here and things slow down or, I don't know, we happen to get in a war in Iran. It's gonna happen. And the economy slows down, you can offload those people. But you can't offload a 51,000 square foot manufacturing facility and $18 million in equipment. True. And 120 people. And so what I saw though, was the difference, what the difference was between us and what they're used to. Is people were resonating with the story. They weren't necessarily buying the knife just because of the quality of the product. It's there. They were buying the knife because

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  of the movement, the mission that we are on, the true like, I don't know, you're, you're obviously better with words, but I'm trying to find how they resonated with the brand and how it felt. And I knew by bringing those processes in and controlling those processes and telling the story that people would continue to support. And at the end of the day, what will end up maybe potentially being a brilliant move is that we will then control that entire supply chain. Like right now, it's still a giant liability to have all that overhead.

• 1:09:14Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  But if Americans continue to support the brand and prove that this is actually the way, the next board member might say, you know what you guys should do? You should buy some land and build a building because Montana Knife Company did that. And they're now not beholden to the supplier that has a bigger competitor that's telling them what they can and can't do.

• 1:09:36Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, it's the old Ray Kroc story, man. You've got a like, what business are you really in? What do you really make? Is it really knives? Are you a facilitator for the feeling that a satisfied customer gets when they buy the product? You know, McDonald's, you know, the famous lecture where he used to go around and talk to kids and he'd, he'd ask room fools, what's my business? You know, and obviously people would say, well, you're in the restaurant business. You're in the meat business. You're in the ranching business. You're in the customer service business and on and on and on. Like, no, man, he's in the real estate business. McDonald's owns more real estate than anybody,

• 1:10:17Mike Rowe?

  you know? And what they did with it was tertiary, you know? And we just happened to put golden arches on it and build that brand. I think right now we're living in a time when the people who dare to make their stuff here, go against the grain, knowing that the government can't protect them from fraud, knowing that their product can't be fairly marketed on social media for whatever reason, knowing all these things, you know, that I think you might be on the vanguard of some kind of genuine renaissance, in which case your business might not be exactly what you think it is. Just look, thank you for the gifts, by the way.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:00Mike Rowe?

  I mean, you're, are you in the shirt business?

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:03Mike Rowe?

  Are you in the hat business? You know, I mean.

• 1:11:07Speaker 02

  We're kind of in all of those things, but it's, uh, uh, we actually have, you know, a bunch of American made apparel that we're trying to launch. Uh, I want to talk to, um, you know, those guys at American Giant.

• 1:11:18Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  And try to figure out a way to collab with those guys. But again, it's, it's a way to have people represent what they believe on their body.

• 1:11:27Mike Rowe?

  What about your buddies up in Maine? You know, Jaco.

• 1:11:30Speaker 02

  Origin?

• 1:11:30Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. We're definitely friends with those guys. We just got to figure out something to do. It's, it's honestly getting past this building. And I think I, I don't know if I told you or I had lunch with a friend before this. You know, I generalled the whole building project, right?

• 1:11:46Mike Rowe?

  So general contracted it?

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I, I, I ran the entire project.

• 1:11:51Mike Rowe?

  That's.

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  The last year and a half.

• 1:11:52Mike Rowe?

  That's very big.

• 1:11:53Speaker 02

  And so when you run an $18 million building and project and it has to be on time and on budget, which we were about a month early getting it done and about a 1% over budget. So it went well, but.

• 1:12:07Mike Rowe?

  If this knife thing doesn't work out.

• 1:12:08Speaker 02

  I feel like the, I don't want to do that again. Uh, but I feel like the aperture has opened up too. And I want to start to bring other companies into what we are doing more and more. And the apparel side is something that we absolutely want to work with more American apparel producers, because it's hard. I mean, we absolutely, we have apparel that's sourced and we have some American apparel. But as American Giant knows, it's hard to do in this country.

• 1:12:37Mike Rowe?

  I dare you. I double dog dare you.

• 1:12:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:40Mike Rowe?

  I mean, it's every single thing sourcing your own cotton, growing your own cotton, making those deals, handling those deliveries. It's, yeah, people don't, that, it chaps my ass too. Because people talk a good game. It's very easy to say, oh yeah, buy American. And it's very easy to stitch a flag on a thing. But when it comes right down to it, I don't know if we talked last time about the experiment. I worked for Wrangler for a couple of years. And I was like, guys, you know, why can't we, at the time, it was Vanity Fair, Lee Jeans, Wrangler, and a couple of other brands. I'm like, can't we just do a, a simple line of American made jeans here? I know they'll be more expensive, but just to give people a choice.

• 1:13:24Mike Rowe?

  And they were like, yes, we can, but let us show you the data from what happened last time we tried.

• 1:13:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:32Mike Rowe?

  And it basically, they were $10 more expensive. Nobody bought any. So they knocked it down $5 more expensive. Nobody bought any. They knocked it down to $2 more expensive. Same exact pair of jeans, one made here, one, one not.

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:44Mike Rowe?

  Nothing. Now they're losing money, but at this point, they need to know where the tipping point is. So they took it down like a quarter, 25 cents more for the same thing made in America. Nothing. Like they tested it all through JCPenney, nothing. Not until they, oh, they went to a penny, a penny more, and they got a little.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:04Mike Rowe?

  A little. It wasn't until it went to zero. That it worked.

• 1:14:09Speaker 02

  I do, I do think that's changing.

• 1:14:11Mike Rowe?

  I do too.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  And I don't know what year they did that, but I would guess it was pre-COVID.

• 1:14:15Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah, that was, it was, it was a couple of decades ago.

• 1:14:17Speaker 02

  And I do think, I've said, I don't need 400 million Americans to support my idea of my business. I understand that there's still going to be plenty of knives made in China that are bought. I need a tiny fraction of those Americans to support my idea. And quite frankly, I think it's a lot more than a tiny fraction that believe in what we're saying. Maybe they don't need a knife, but maybe it is a pair of Origin jeans or an American Giant shirt. I believe really since COVID and we are, we are seeing a renaissance in this stuff, but we do need support from the government to help these ideas scale from just tiny, small niche brands into giant American brands. And I, I think there's things they could do with taxes.

• 1:15:00Speaker 02

  I think you could give new businesses incredibly low tax rates for the first five years or up to a certain cap. Say, hey, once you cross 10 million in sales, you're going to pay the normal business taxes. But in the first five years, we're going to help you pay almost no tax. Like it takes so much money to just get off the ground as a business owner. And we did it, we bootstrapped it. We just sold 200 knives and then we made 200 more and sold those. And then we made 500, but we were fortunate because of the style of the product. It was relatively simple. Some of these new businesses take a heavy, heavy investment upfront in equipment before you can make one thing.

• 1:15:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  And that's why I say I don't also begrudge somebody who does have to sell 50% of their idea to VC to fund the first machine that they have to buy.

• 1:15:51Mike Rowe?

  How else can you compete? You know, you can bootstrap it, but you know, not everybody's got the cojones.

• 1:15:57Speaker 02

  But the government could absolutely find ways to, um, to grease the skids for that.

• 1:16:03Mike Rowe?

  What kind of knife is that?

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  This is our stockyard knife. It's an interesting blade. It's got not really, uh, any kind of a tip on it. And that's for, if you're working around animals, if you're, you usually find ranchers and farmers, uh, carrying this. So if, say you're riding your horse, you get baling twine or something wrapped up in your horse and you get off to cut that out and the horse kicks or a calf kicks, it doesn't stab them. It's safe around animals. This is one of our working class knives. Uh, we, we call it our blue collar line. You know, yes, that's a little bit niche, but honestly I make tools for people and not every tool is going to be for every single American, though you find tons of people opening boxes with these at work.

• 1:16:46Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:16:46Speaker 02

  Cause again, you're not going to stab yourself. It's a pretty safe tip. This is a lineman knife here, a skinny knife that linemen use at work. You can take this ring and you suck it up in what's called a shotgun and you can cut like, say twine that a bird has dropped in the power line off or whatever. They call it hot sticking. But both of these knives, we're adding to our blue collar line. And in addition to, to your blade, we are going to add this to the MicroWorks Foundation donation. So the rocker and these two blades, so a percentage of every one of these sold is going to go to the MicroWorks Foundation. So we're expanding that blue collar line.

• 1:17:30Speaker 02

  And honestly, I told you this in the very beginning, it'd be a crawl, walk, run. As we grow and scale, I can't tell you how much I believe in your mission with trade schools, with apprenticeships. This is truly how America survives. These people build America and I actually called these people out at our, at my speech on Friday night, we kind of had a friends, family event and I invited a bunch of the contractors that built our building. Too often we see these buildings open up and they cut the ribbon and all the fancy investors are there, the government officials and everybody. And the guy who froze his ass off on the steel, you know, beams in February when we started tipping it up, they're not there.

• 1:18:15Speaker 02

  And so we invited a bunch of our contractors and thanked them. And it's those guys that build the buildings that allow us to build America, you know, to build the American dream. So.

• 1:18:25Mike Rowe?

  Well, I know how much you care. Since you told me you were going to do this, you guys have sent my foundation $188,000 for a small company that's making a go of it in Frenchtown, Montana. I don't take that lightly. I tell your story often and to anybody who will listen because you put your money. Where your mouth is, and I appreciate the kind words and you know, did you see that thing I did with Theo Von last year?

• 1:18:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:55Mike Rowe?

  We may do that again. I just mention it because in spite of the fact that the media couldn't get its act together to show up to cover your thing, there are a lot of people who are paying attention. Obviously, 5,000 people show up just to be on hand.

• 1:19:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:19:11Mike Rowe?

  Is the thing, but you know, Theo has a huge audience and that, he cares.

• 1:19:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's a really nice guy. He really is. He's, people see the comedian side, but I, I don't want to overstate how much I know him. I've been around him a couple of times.

• 1:19:26Mike Rowe?

  Have you been on his show?

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  Uh, no, no.

• 1:19:29Mike Rowe?

  Hey, Theo. He's sitting here.

• 1:19:33Speaker 02

  Uh, but his, his, uh,

• 1:19:35Mike Rowe?

  Rogan?

• 1:19:36Speaker 02

  Haven't been on Joe's.

• 1:19:37Mike Rowe?

  Joe.

• 1:19:38Speaker 02

  No. Joe, again, has been very good to us.

• 1:19:40Mike Rowe?

  Uh, yeah, you know what? I, he's, he gives you regular shout outs.

• 1:19:45Speaker 02

  He does, and he wears our shirt or hat once in a while, which is, which is massive. But, uh, but Theo, I think, really does believe in like, things like what we are doing and things like you're doing and you know, Theo came from a background of, you know, um, you know, blue collar.

• 1:20:03Mike Rowe?

  Louisiana.

• 1:20:04Speaker 02

  Uh, poor. You know, he saw people struggling to make livings and now that he is where he is, I think he, he wants to do what he can do to help.

• 1:20:12Mike Rowe?

  You know what? His manager told me something and I've confirmed it. I know it's true, but he'll go to a town, he'll do a show. It's exhausting, as you can imagine. You know, you're living on the road, you go to a town, you promote the thing, you go out, you do the thing. And now it's what, 11:30 at night and you're beat. And, um, you know, Theo's relationship with his fans is like yours, is very engaged.

• 1:20:36Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:20:37Mike Rowe?

  You know, they want to stick around and say hello.

• 1:20:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:40Mike Rowe?

  And so he sticks around and it's no bum's rush. And I mean, there are stories of him standing there in the lobby of the venue after the people who run the venue are like, look, you gotta go. He doesn't go. He just stays there and people come up and they tell him stories.

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:56Mike Rowe?

  They thank him. It's not just, oh, that was so funny. They, they're connecting. That's what I meant earlier. Theo is a comedian.

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:04Mike Rowe?

  But his brand is not comedy.

• 1:21:06Speaker 02

  Right, right. And I saw it firsthand. He did that in Missoula. He stood out in the lobby and shook hands for over an hour afterwards. And it wasn't just a quick, you know, photo and out. And, you know, those guys are on the road every other night. They're doing that. That's exhausting. I mean, you, you know, you talk to people all the time. It's exhausting. He really is a, uh, from what I've seen, a really good person.

• 1:21:30Mike Rowe?

  Well, look, I mean, there, it's like Bush used to, he got a lot of grief for it, but the whole, you know, thousand points of light thing.

• 1:21:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:37Mike Rowe?

  I think about that all the time now. I think it's true. I think you can find that sentiment in, in certain kinds of companies. You can find it in certain kinds of comedians, podcasters, personalities.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:49Mike Rowe?

  Those are the ones who I think can have a real seat at this table. And, you know, if the Today Show is not going to show up, if the national media is not going to show up to cover that event, then, you know, and again, I hope I'm not talking out of school, but I, I loved our conversation two weeks ago. You, you didn't call to invite yourself on this podcast. You didn't, you just called to invite me to your thing. And then we just talked about these basic-

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  I asked you advice. You were very kind to give it.

• 1:22:21Mike Rowe?

  Well, I'm very stingy with advice because God forbid somebody take it, but-

• 1:22:26Speaker 02

  Well, but you're, you are telling such an important message. And I feel like our message is not the same exact message about the same thing, but they are parallel paths and they are both as critically important to our nation's existence. And they really, you know, flow in and out of each other. The, the apprenticeships and the trade schools that you are helping kids go to might be working for us down the road. That might be a machinist, that Swiss lathe operator. I mean, I'm sorry, but we need help. We, we need machinists. We need Swiss lathe operators. We need those people that you are helping put in school. And so what you are doing is helping feed into businesses like mine and other businesses that are trying to do the same thing.

• 1:23:09Speaker 02

  And so it's a parallel path that is bipartisan. What we are talking about is not a Democrat Republican thing. And it's just unfortunate that on television, that's pretty much mostly all they want to talk about.

• 1:23:22Mike Rowe?

  That's it.

• 1:23:23Speaker 02

  Is-

• 1:23:24Mike Rowe?

  This or that.

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:25Mike Rowe?

  Right?

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. One last thing I've got here. I have to show you this and I'm going to give it to you. This is the culmination and it's gonna sound crazy and the average consumer is gonna go, you know, yeah, it's just a folding knife, but we have been trying to develop and build a folding knife for two and a half years.

• 1:23:45Mike Rowe?

  Like a pocket knife?

• 1:23:46Speaker 02

  A pocket knife.

• 1:23:47Mike Rowe?

  That, that's the first thing you and I talked about two years ago.

• 1:23:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:50Mike Rowe?

  That's the.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  We've been working on it since.

• 1:23:52Mike Rowe?

  Really?

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  And the new manufacturing building, like we could not have made this in my backyard in Frenchtown. We had to, we had to purchase this equipment. I had to hire, well, when I was on your podcast in 2024, I had 50 employees. Today's 120. That growth is what's made this possible. And I say this, and I'm actually asking you guys, I'm asking Chuck, to not put this out for about two weeks because we literally started assembling these yesterday.

• 1:24:22Mike Rowe?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:24:23Speaker 02

  Like, we are, uh, this has been just such a giant undertaking and I'm very excited about it, but this is our new folding knife. Uh, it's called the Montana and I want you to open that. Um, we're very excited. You're the first person to ever receive one. So.

• 1:24:42Mike Rowe?

  Oh, wow. Made for America.

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:24:46Mike Rowe?

  Why not in?

• 1:24:48Speaker 02

  I feel like that brings the customer in, like they're a part of it. We made this for the people that have been supporting us this entire time. Not in, but.

• 1:25:00Mike Rowe?

  I love that, man. That preposition, it's sometimes the, the smallest, you know, the smallest words have the biggest impact.

• 1:25:08Speaker 02

  Well, our customers that bought these knives all the way along. They made this possible because I could never have made this in my garage.

• 1:25:16Mike Rowe?

  Even the box, even the box, you know, is there a more satisfying sound than a well-machined box than the snick? Of course, that's a magnet, but whatever. That works great. Beautiful. Beautiful.

• 1:25:32Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:25:35Mike Rowe?

  What are we calling it?

• 1:25:37Speaker 02

  The Montana. It's a liner lock. It's got a couple of things that I think are cool. It's got no screws on this side, like there's no screw heads. And in fact, this arrowhead actually has a screw going into it from the other side to hold that handle on.

• 1:25:51Mike Rowe?

  How's that work?

• 1:25:53Speaker 02

  We've re-engineered the liner lock to be what we think is one of the best liner locks ever made. That's the mechanism that you're pushing on there. The arrowhead on the pocket clip. So when you're at a restaurant and you look down at somebody's pocket, if it's not an arrowhead, it's not an MKC. And there's a couple of things with that. One, we started as a hunting knife company and I never want to lose our roots. And also you can find arrowheads, you know, people go arrowhead hunting in Montana. So it's the Montana, it's got the arrowheads. And then the engineering and the manufacturing, everything in that, there's, I mean, 120 people making that possible. So it's a big moment for us, for sure.

• 1:26:36Mike Rowe?

  That's huge, dude. Congratulations and thank you.

• 1:26:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:26:39Mike Rowe?

  I mean, I assume this is a gift, right?

• 1:26:40Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. Well, it's not just a gift, but it is a thank you. You know, in the last year and a half since you and I met, you know, you go do these talks, we see it, we see our hat that you wear, our shirt. There's a lot of people that, you know, talk a big game and whatnot, but you truly do believe in the mission that we are on and, uh, and we believe in your mission.

• 1:27:04Mike Rowe?

  Well, you've been extraordinarily generous, you know, and, uh, again, I don't take it lightly. We're big fans. We're rooting for you in every way. What is it about a pocket knife, man? How is it that this talisman has endured? Why are these things passed down from generation to generation?

• 1:27:24Speaker 02

  I really believe, one, I think it's in who carried it. If you had a pocket knife that your grandfather carried right now, and if somebody was to set that on the table and say, your grandfather carried that, it would mean something to you. Any tool, a hammer, a framing hammer, if you had, if your grandfather was a framer and you had his framing hammer, it's about the hands, I feel like. And, you know, my dad has working hands. My hands have gotten soft in the last few years, sitting in an office. But, you know, I think it's, it's about who carried it, the things they've done. And also, do you really want to be the guy when, when some gal asks, hey, do you guys have a pocket knife? I need to open something. And do you want to be the guy that doesn't have the pocket knife?

• 1:28:08Mike Rowe?

  You want to be MacGyver. Of course I have a pocket knife.

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:12Mike Rowe?

  And then you want to be Crocodile Dundee. That's not a knife. That's a knife. Wow.

• 1:28:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:19Mike Rowe?

  Well, look, I made the point the last time, but the fact that you're doing this in Montana is just so great. I was up there not long ago, you know, in fact, I texted you, but I met, what's his name, the governor, Jean Forte.

• 1:28:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:31Mike Rowe?

  And he's doing some good stuff, too. He's a fan.

• 1:28:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, he is. He's doing a good job in Montana, for sure. And I heard about friends of mine that own Central Plumbing and Heating were at that talk. And Jesse Waldenberg texted me and he was like, Mike's wearing your hat.

• 1:28:48Mike Rowe?

  You know, I mean, why wouldn't I?

• 1:28:49Speaker 02

  Again, we hear it.

• 1:28:50Mike Rowe?

  I was in Montana.

• 1:28:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:28:52Mike Rowe?

  I was in Montana where a, where a river runs through it. God, remember that one?

• 1:28:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:58Mike Rowe?

  Norman Clayton.

• 1:28:59Speaker 02

  That was made about the Blackfoot River.

• 1:29:02Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:02Speaker 02

  Which is where I grew up, Blackfoot River Valley. That's why the first knife that we ever made was called the Blackfoot.

• 1:29:09Mike Rowe?

  Eventually, all things merge into one and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On the rocks are teardrops. Beneath them are words, and some of the words are theirs.

• 1:29:31Mike Rowe?

  That's so cool. It's a great book.

• 1:29:33Speaker 02

  You're a pro. You're, he's really good.

• 1:29:35Mike Rowe?

  You know what I remember? I remember Robert Redford.

• 1:29:37Speaker 02

  He lets me know all the time.

• 1:29:40Speaker 02

  This stuff's gonna work out for you, I think.

• 1:29:42Mike Rowe?

  No, man, look, it's, uh, our country could learn a lot from the Big Sky Boys. And, um, anybody who's paying attention will see that on display. You know what? Go on YouTube and find the video. It's like 18 minutes long and it's just a fly on the wall and you can see what a love letter looks like to manufacturing that's writ by the guy who built it. I had no idea you were your own general contractor on that thing, you lunatic. That's crazy, but you're a, yeah, yeah, man, you're a lineman who made good. Look at that. They flew in on a Blackhawk?

• 1:30:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, uh, the local firefighting people, uh, offered to bring that Blackhawk. They put our logos on it and everything, uh, but they offered to bring that in. They believe in what we're doing. Those guys are fighting wildland fire with Blackhawks. They put the logo on there, it backfired a little because people came up and started congratulating me for buying a Blackhawk. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

• 1:30:40Mike Rowe?

  Not quite there yet, easy.

• 1:30:41Speaker 02

  No, we need more C and Z machines and lathes and, uh, people.

• 1:30:44Mike Rowe?

  Easy. Okay, so, uh, you're still doing the mic drops? There's still new stuff in the works? The website is still mkc.com?

• 1:30:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, montanaknifecompany.com.

• 1:30:53Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:30:54Speaker 02

  Uh, soon to be mkc.com. We're this close, actually. Uh, we had to buy that, but, uh...

• 1:31:00Mike Rowe?

  Isn't that crazy, man?

• 1:31:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 1:31:01Mike Rowe?

  Uh, there was a guy who owned micro.com 18 years ago. Really? Yeah. Yeah, he was happy to sell it to me and I was like, you know something? I'm not gonna buy my name. I'm just gonna wait till you die. And he died four months later.

• 1:31:14Speaker 02

  Did you, you didn't, you didn't have anything to...

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  Under suspicious circumstances, as I remember.

• 1:31:18Mike Rowe?

  It was a real tragedy.

• 1:31:19Speaker 02

  Do you know Hillary?

• 1:31:23Mike Rowe?

  Well, it took you 90 minutes to get there, Josh. But you finally landed the plane, or the Blackhawk. Go buy a knife that was made in this country by people who give a damn. And thank you for coming back on the pod. And I will make it up there soon. And I'll expect nothing less than a private tour.

• 1:31:44Speaker 02

  Well, I'll hold you to that, for sure.

• 1:31:45Mike Rowe?

  Maybe a decent cup of Black Rifle Coffee.

• 1:31:48Speaker 02

  Perfect, we can do that.

• 1:31:49Mike Rowe?

  Gosh Chuck, I wonder if they'll ever advertise on this podcast again.

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  You know what? Do me a favor, would you Josh?

• 1:31:54Mike Rowe?

  Could you just ask Evan? Tell him I still, I mean, I'm drinking his coffee right now, for crying out loud.

• 1:31:58Speaker 02

  Evan, what are we doing here? Let's go. We gotta advertise.

• 1:32:01Mike Rowe?

  What are we doing, man?

• 1:32:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:02Mike Rowe?

  All right.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:32:04Mike Rowe?

  That's a good one. I really, really put the arm on poor Evan there.

• 1:32:09Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thanks for the knife. I appreciate it.

• 1:32:11Mike Rowe?

  Me's the world. Josh Smith, everyone. Goodbye. If you like what you heard... And even if you don't... Won't you please... Won't you please, pretty please, pretty please, subscribe? Well, I hate to beg and I hate to plead, but please, pretty frickin' please, please

• 1:32:31Speaker 03

  sub... Please subscribe.

• 1:33:30Speaker 04

  One?

• 1:33:31Speaker 05

  It's one. The sheriffs in our district endorse Rob Whitman instead. They know Shannon Taylor calls herself a progressive prosecutor.

• 1:33:39Speaker 04

  Progressive prosecutor? What's that even mean?

• 1:33:42Speaker 05

  She founded a group that backed a bunch of nutty, soft-on-crime-stuff here in Virginia, like ending cash bail.

• 1:33:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, man, that is nuts.

• 1:33:51Speaker 05

  Taylor's group also opposed harsher penalties for assaulting cops and backed "defund the police" candidates.

• 1:33:59Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Now it makes sense. Shannon Taylor is with criminals, not cops. That's why the sheriffs in our district are for Rob Whitman.

• 1:34:07Speaker 05

  Yep, Rob Whitman all the way.

• 1:34:09Speaker 06

  I'm Rob Whitman, candidate for Congress, and I approve this message.

• 1:34:13Speaker 04

  Paid for by Rob Whitman for Congress.